At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!

If you've ever been playing games online with the X■O, then you know that pirates and crackers were pretty much partying on that platform so much that it has almost killed the platform. Online matches are full of cheaters, and the act of running a pirated game on Xbox 360 is almost so easy that anykind of an idiot can do it. DVDs and easy to burn and the software has been cracked to run ISO images from external HDDs. The situation on the Wii is just as or even worse than this.

Publishers and developers were not ready to invest into the platform were it was more than certain that the game would get pirated. And that's why currently Xbox 360 has practically no flow for new exclusive games. Wii also suffers greatly from lack of the 3rd party titles.

The PS3's unauthorized software is also broadly available, but the device itself is still pretty difficult to pirate. This is due BD drive and the sheer size of the games only available for PS3. And a few other things. But it's still more or less easy to do if you know what you're doing.

The content ID system in X■1, and the way the DRM is handled in the new Xbox is in my opinion just the next step for Microsoft to try to prolong the upcoming battle against the crackers who want to run pirated games and cheat in online games and do controlled modifications. Not to mention the hackers who want to tinker with the box and run GNU/Linux on it and do homebrew software.

While the overall problem with the unauthorized copies of games and other software might be more significant problem on Windows-PCs, the problem exists for closed game devices as well, and it's getting worse with more people getting onto those devices.